Last week, somebody broke into Gawker.com and stole 1.3 million account names, e-mail addresses, and passwords — and then posted all the booty on the Internet.

Your online security might not be at the top of your mind this time of year, but most likely you’re doing more Internet shopping. In light of the Gawker break-in, take a few minutes to assess your passwords.

Protecting Web applications — and the customers who use them — from cyber attacks is the responsibility of every Web developer. McGraw Hill’s Hacking Exposed: Web Applications, Third Edition, by Joel Scambray, Vincent Liu, and Caleb Sima, exposes the thinking and tools of today’s hackers — and gives developers the insight they need to harden their apps.

We’re not sure what to make of this, but the Wacky column is a Windows Secrets subscriber favorite — measured by the number of hits it receives — proving that our readers have a fine sense of humor.

So to end 2010 with a smile, we’ve put together a special Wacky — the five most popular of the year. We’ll start, however, with one of our all-time favorite videos. And at the end, we’ve tossed in two more of our particular favorites. Enjoy!

We’ve all had those times when a seemingly trivial task unexpectedly proves beyond our abilities. It often gives rise to a hidden stubborn streak — a need to accomplish the deed, regardless of the cost.

Protecting Web applications — and the customers who use them — from cyber attacks is the responsibility of every Web developer. McGraw Hill’s Hacking Exposed: Web Applications, Third Edition, by Joel Scambray, Vincent Liu, and Caleb Sima, exposes the thinking and tools of today’s hackers — and gives developers the insight they need to harden their apps.

One measure of our success battling malware is the number of patches we’re asked to install each month. By that benchmark, we’re surely losing.

The patch count for December is a record for the year, with fixes for Internet Explorer, zero-day bugs, and DLL preloading threats. This might be end-of-year house cleaning, as most of the patches are not critical.

Most of the time, dining out is a pleasant change from our daily routine — interesting food, good conversation, and best of all, no cleaning up! But a rude waiter, poorly cooked food, or that obnoxiously loud conversation at the next table can quickly ruin the fun.

As some of our readers have already noticed, Windows Secrets is now on Facebook and Twitter. We are starting small but plan to expand our presence on the popular sites in the coming months. We hope to see you there.

Ahhh, Thanksgiving in the U.S.! Outside, the leaves are changing, and we’re starting to feel that holiday spirit. It’s a time of family, friends, and gratitude — and lots of yummy food. For one day, life seems simple and uncomplicated.

It’s hard not to be amazed — and a bit jealous — when listening to people with a glib tongue. Those fast-talkers can connive their way out of a speeding ticket or wrangle their way into a hot new nightclub.

On October 22, Microsoft pulled the plug on sales of Windows XP, ending the operating system’s spectacular nine-year run.

With no new copies being sold, support for XP will start to decline. Fortunately, XP’s long run has produced a ton of collected wisdom: everything you need to keep your copy going strong and — when ready — to help you move on.

Sometimes the best application is not the one with the most bells and whistles — it’s the one that does the job with minimal fuss.

Lounge member Dick Moores is helping out a friend who’s migrating to Windows 7 but may find Outlook more than is needed. Dick raises the question of what’s the best, simple e-mail client, and gets a passel of opinions.

Most of us are all too familiar with the funny and somewhat obnoxious PC-vs.-Apple commercials. But back in the 1980s, Compaq took a more indirect but just as humorous swipe at the competition — IBM. Starring the famous and hilarious John Cleese, Compaq’s new portable computer is put up against a … 22-pound fish!

In his Oct. 28 In the Wild column, Robert Vamosi showed how easy it is to snoop a Wi-Fi connection using a clever Firefox add-in called Firesheep.

If you’re serious about protecting your surfing from prying eyes while on an unencrypted public Wi-Fi connection, the onus is on you to lock down your connections. Using virtual private networking (VPN) is one of the best ways I know to do that.

Having a reliable external hard drive is fundamental to a good backup and archival storage strategy.

But deciding which drive is best-suited to your needs can be mind-boggling. Speed, capacity, overall size, and price are all important factors in the final choice. And then there are the intangibles. Are you going for the latest designer shape and color?

In the battle of Windows vs. Mac, the proponents of both often look at Linux with derision. But comparing stats, capabilities, and usability just doesn’t compare to one simple factor — how an operating system feels to its user.

Having your e-mail address hijacked by spammers is more than irritating; it can damage your reputation and make communicating with friends and business associates painfully difficult.

Sometimes spammers simply steal your e-mail identity and send out thousands of unwanted messages under your name. Even worse, they might install malware on your PC and send their dreck from your own machine without your knowledge.

Are you ready to make the jump to Windows 7? If so, this month’s bonus is for you! All Windows Secrets subscribers can download a one-chapter excerpt from Switching to Microsoft Windows 7: The Painless Way to Upgrade from Windows XP or Vista by Elna Tymes and Charles Prael.

The art of beard- and mustache-sculpting sometimes lends itself to whimsy, with soul patches and muttonchops usually marking the height of creativity. But add a little competitive incentive, and things can quickly move to the bizarre.

Periodically cleaning the innards of your computer is a necessary task. Accumulated dust and detritus can cause overheating and component failure. But safely removing dirt from the delicate parts of a motherboard requires more finesse than simply blasting them with canned air.

Who could ever argue that Windows error messages and BSODs are things of beauty? No, they’re more often associated with a sudden rise in blood pressure and the overwhelming desire to whack your computer with something hard — like a hammer!

In their headlong drive to steal some of Facebook’s thunder, Microsoft and Google incorporate some highly questionable social-networking features into their popular e-mail services.

Google’s Buzz comes under the most fire, with many privacy experts and Internet users deeply concerned that it plays fast and loose with personal privacy. There are some important facts all Gmail users should know.

Every year, the highly respected Verizon Business RISK data crime–investigation team publishes an analysis of major online data thefts it’s been asked to study.

This year, a first-ever joint report by VBR and the U.S. Secret Service presents a fascinating view into the state of the data-stealing art, with many surprising facts that should interest all consumers.

Avatar may represent the state of the art in digital moviemaking, but back in the ’30s, it was an analog world in which clever dogs acted out classic human dramas. It was quite impressive for the time — and good for a laugh, too.

The zoo can be an exciting place — the lions roaring, the hyenas cackling, the elephants trumpeting. Too bad that every time you visit, the residents are taking naps. If only there were a way to get the wildlife back on their feet.

Ah, Twitter. That love-it-or-hate-it social networking cosmos where the profound stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the inane and the absurd. One has images of Twitter authors obsessively banging away on their keyboards and smart phones at all hours of the day and night, 140 characters at a time.

If you qualify, a Microsoft TechNet subscription lets you download nearly every application Microsoft sells, all for a paltry $199.

It’s completely legitimate — so long as you’re not using the software for work but rather evaluating its features, testing its performance, or otherwise assessing its suitability for yourself or others.

Office 2010 marked Microsoft’s aggressive entrance into the cloud-computing arena, and Sky Drive is a key component of the company’s move to online services.

Part of the new Windows Live service, SkyDrive offers generous — and free — online data storage and simple collaboration. But there are other cloud-based services that provide more features and better options.

Our online forum, the Windows Secrets Lounge, is a great warehouse of computer knowledge — but sometimes it’s a bit hard to find the single best page you need out of the 125,000 discussion threads our members have contributed.

That’s why our developers are launching this week a significant improvement to the Lounge — a way to cast votes for the posts you consider the most useful and, in so doing, help others find them.

This month’s free bonus download for all our subscribers is a two-chapter excerpt from Me and My Web Shadow: How to Manage Your Reputation Online by Antony Mayfield. The book provides valuable information about managing and protecting your online persona, while also providing tips on how to make the Internet work in your favor.

Advertisements are everywhere in today’s world. With billboards, televisions, the radio, and even our reading material bombarded with ads pushing product, it’s only a matter of time before they find their way into our cell phone conversations.

The firewall is one of the most fundamental components of PC security — and it’s the least understood by the average computer user.

The conventional wisdom is to never run more than one antivirus program at a time and never run multiple anti-spyware apps together — so why do we routinely rely on both hardware and software firewalls?

In its rush to take on Facebook and Google Buzz, Microsoft is now collecting and displaying personal information on your Hotmail page — information you may never have wanted to broadcast.

Exactly how it’s mining this information is something of a mystery, but if you use Hotmail or Windows Live, it’s time to review your privacy settings — lest something you said or did comes back to haunt you.

Millions of Americans depend on libraries, Internet cafés, and other public locations for their connection to the Internet, and keeping these points of access safe from hackers is especially difficult.

Recently, however, Microsoft has made that challenge even more difficult for many public libraries.

When we started opening up the Windows Secrets Lounge to Google and other Web indexes a few months ago, we didn’t realize how hard it would be to get the search engine gods to find all our pages.

Finally, we hit the right solution. Google now includes more than 60,000 pages from the Lounge — over half of our total discussion threads — with the rest soon to become available to searchers around the globe.

Happy April Fools’ Day! For those unaware, today is the one day of the year when you can play pranks on friends and family — and get away with it! Whether it’s a classic like putting salt in the sugar bowl or something entirely new, don’t let the day go by unpranked.

Our free bonus this month is crammed with 83 tricks you’ll want to take advantage of immediately (or whenever you install Win7). The bonus e-book is a 41-page printable PDF by Chris Pirillo of the Lockergnome.com tech site. Thousands of these e-books have sold for $7 each, but every WS subscriber can get a copy absolutely free. The offer is good only for a limited time, so get your copy now. Simply visit your WS preferences page, update your info and save it, and you’ll see a download link thereafter. Thanks! —Brian Livingston, editorial director

The old saw that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery can take many forms &#8212 someone who copies your dress, someone who copies your mannerisms, someone who steals your favorite catch phrases.

Technology can be great, but when you’re trying to upgrade a PC, incompatible hardware can be a pain.

Moving data from an older drive to a newer one gave members of the Windows Secrets Lounge an opportunity to provide helpful information, as shown in the first of the following most-active threads this week:

Unexpected disk and processor activity on your PC is worrisome, but unexplained Internet activity is more troubling.

When a PC suddenly starts uploading or downloading data from the Internet, a bit of paranoia is perfectly reasonable — possibly your system is infected with a virus or other malware. In this report, I’ll give you some tips and tools for diagnosing unexplained Internet traffic.

Constantly moving your hands between the keyboard and mouse is not the most efficient way to interact with our computers, but most of us doggedly stick to it.

But if you take a little time to learn (or relearn) a few basic keyboard and mouse shortcuts, you can blaze through your windows faster and more easily — and possibly put less stress on your overworked hands as well.

When your PC suddenly starts churning away on its own without obvious cause, you probably wonder: Just what the heck is going on in there?

The possibilities range from the benign to the nefarious — from normal background maintenance to a hacker mining your system for whatever he can find. Here are some tips and software that can help you know exactly what’s happening.

More than 33,000 new members have signed up to use the Lounge discussion board since it moved to our domain name last November, and they and the 20,000 existing Loungers have been posting a flurry of useful tips.

Beginning this week, our newsletter’s new “Lounge Life” column will highlight the best new topics and the most-interesting questions posted.

Most standard Windows maintenance tasks can be accomplished using the utilities included with the OS itself — but that doesn’t mean those tools are your best option.

Whether you’re looking for an easier way to browse the image files in a folder, create a restore point, revert to XP’s Classic Start Menu, or customize your file associations, there’s a (free) app for that.

Microsoft’s Web site often bears end-user license agreements (EULAs) that differ from the ones displayed to users during software installation, as described in a Feb. 4top story
by WS senior editor Woody Leonhard.

Whatever your feelings about EULAs in general, the idea that a EULA might change after that fact sparked a lively discussion among members of the Windows Secrets Lounge.

The best optical illusions are truly mind-boggling. Tricking your brain into seeing what isn’t really there can be challenging — but once you get the hang of it, you have the sensation of a hallucination without having to ingest any controlled substances.

As of this writing, Microsoft is scheduled to release on Jan. 21 an update that fixes the Internet Explorer vulnerability behind the recent, highly publicized cyberattacks on Google and other major corporations.

The sophisticated “Aurora” exploit is delivered through common file attachments or links — typically in e-mail or other messages that appear to come from trusted sources — but proven security measures and a little common sense can negate all such threats.

A refreshing beverage or snack straight from a vending machine is a simple treat that almost everyone enjoys. Whether at work or school, allowing yourself to indulge in a soda or a cookie brings pleasure to even the most ordinary day.

You’ve probably seen plenty of flipbooks in your time — and maybe even created one or two. A flipbook that takes five seconds to “read” probably took the artist hours to draw. Nevertheless, the books are a cool way to watch do-it-yourself animation.

Remember getting into sticky situations as a child? Back then, you thought you could do anything, until the inevitable happened and you were left in a pickle. No doubt your parents chuckled at your self-induced predicament as you begged them for help.

If you’ll be setting up Windows 7 on more than a couple of computers — or if you need to add Win7 to a PC without a working DVD drive — save yourself time and bother by converting a USB drive into a Windows setup “disc.”

With a couple of free utilities, a 4GB or larger USB drive, any Windows 7 setup DVD, and a little time, you can build your own Win7 universal USB installer.

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